'Mode': A Word I Hope I Never Hear In Business Again.
And what's really needed in entrepreneurial ed today.
A few weeks ago I was mentoring a group of high school students about entrepreneurship, and one student asked the question, “What’s better, founder mode or manager mode?” My heart sank. Clearly he was savvy enough to be up on the latest entrepreneurial lingo, but still naive enough to think these modes were real… as in meaningful. But that’s not what saddened (and surprised) me the most. The real blow was that he perceived them as mutually exclusive and an important career choice he’ll one day face.
I can understand why. Founder mode and manager mode were pitted against one another from the start in Paul Graham’s now famous and infamous essay aptly titled “Founder Mode” (Sep 2024). Then, more mainstream business media used Graham’s essay as a bell ring to start a tussle of egos among high-profile businesspeople, giving them platforms to sound off in favor of one mode vs. the other. Naturally, others took to LinkedIn, X, Medium, and this very platform to join the fight— many coining new phrases like “scale mode”, “owner mode”, and the fem-friendly version “nurture mode”. The “mode” rhetoric was everywhere… for a minute.
With each of these “mode” mentions, I just kept thinking about the different drive modes of my car and how my conversation with the dealer went something like this:
Dealer: “Do you plan on hauling anything?”
Me: “No.”
Dealer: “Do you do a lot of off-roading?”
Me: “Uh, no. Not on purpose.”
Dealer: “Great. Just keep it in Normal all the time and don’t touch these buttons.”
It’s not lost on me that this conversation may have gone differently with my husband on the scene because— well— he’s a man. And also because he strangely gets a thrill from pressing buttons (something I’ve never understood). But, let’s be real. The gist of the dealer’s message was simple: “None of these different modes really matter, and 99% of the time you just want to be Normal.”
I’ve been a founder, manager, scaler, owner, nurturer— all of these things— and, no, I’m no Steve Jobs (nor have I ever wanted to be). But I’ve still amassed a ton of information and insight in my career, and I’ve grown. Had I been taught back in business school that I had to flip on various modes of leadership to be successful, I would have disqualified myself from the learned path that I’ve had at the start. Most people can’t perform in a “mode” for very long if it’s not really in them, nor do they gain much from doing so other than a whole lot of mixed messages and self-doubt.
Thankfully— contrary to Graham’s implied wishes1— I don’t think founder mode (or any of the others) will be taught in business school. For starters, nothing about founder mode is backed by hard data2 and most institutions of higher ed take things like numbers, science, and research pretty seriously. Then there are the plethora of social media memes that went viral days after Graham’s post that essentially equated founder mode to sexist bro-ism and/or a mode to nowhere— associations most business schools don’t want to invite. And finally, Joe Procopio, founder of TeachingStartup.com, coined the phrase “banana mode” in a high-profile opinion piece for Inc. which basically made a mockery of all “mode” speak. He sarcastically wrote,
“Banana mode is a term coined by Joe Procopio in a controversial 2024 blog post talking about the desire to create BS terms that eventually get taught in business school.”3
And there you have it— the rise and fall of “founder mode” in less than 3 weeks.
But still, we have young people today being introduced to business and entrepreneurship in a highly divisive fashion. This worries me. Will they truly be successful at solving problems, leading diverse teams, and creating our future if they’re conditioned to believe there’s only one “right” way? Or— worse— if they’re forced to choose a path, an association, or an ideology from the get-go?
Kim Scott, author of the book Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity and a former executive at Google and Apple, recently wrote an opinion piece for The New York Times titled “‘Founder Mode’ Explains the Rise of Trump in Silicon Valley.” In it, she aligns the ideology of founder mode with Trumpism, and— because of the way things are in America right now— effectively puts a divide between tech founders and the rest of industry that’s synonymous with the vast chasm felt between Trump supporters and Harris supporters. I get her point, but at the same time question how it’s helpful (particularly for the aspiring business leaders she aims to help). Isn’t there good and bad to be gleaned across the spectrum of industry and entrepreneurship? Her piece came out more than a month after Paul Graham’s “Founder Mode” essay.
At the time, “founder mode” was all but dead. Yet clearly Scott and The New York Times felt it could be resuscitated to stand for an exaggeration of otherness when needed.
This “exaggeration of otherness” is exactly what saddened me about the high school student’s question (“What’s better, founder mode or manager mode?”). It’s as if he believed he needed to make a choice about these opposing modes, and soon. I didn’t have a good response then, but maybe I do now… something along the lines of “Just go with what feels natural to you, and over time you’ll develop the versatility you really need to grow in your career.” A response like this would probably never satisfy a young student hungry for straightforward answers, but it’s as honest as I can be. Being an entrepreneur or in business is hard. Let’s not add to that the responsibility of “acting” according to a certain mode. For what? Effect? Headlines? Conformity?
I’ve been immersed in the education sector lately, and— either I’ve forgotten or there’s been a dramatic shift since I was in school— I’ve noticed a lot more time spent on developing good habits vs. straight mastery of content. Hence, my emphasis to the young high schooler “do what feels natural.” I’m trusting his modern schooling has instilled in him a thing or two about listening, compassion, compromise, and curiosity (you know, all those good “c” words)— things that honestly would serve many seasoned professionals and gray-haired heads of business well. But as we look beyond high school, to college and business school, here are three courses that I’d love to see added to prepare young professionals to respond to the world as it is today. Spoiler alert: “Founder Mode” is not one of them.
Mining for Truth. This was a skill I learned long after business school that now comes into play in everything I do— from getting to the root of a business problem to figuring out language that resonates with consumers to trying to be a good mom. One of the first things I learned in business (not in business school, but prior to that) was how to manipulate data to tell the story I thought people wanted to hear (kindly put, how to tell a compelling version of the truth). Data was only a fraction as abundant then as it is now. Today, one can find data to craft just about any story. With this luxury comes responsibility and also the need for some healthy skepticism. The one risk in business that’s undoubtedly bigger than being fed lies or false hopes (a pitfall of manager mode according to Graham4) is telling yourself lies. Learning when and how to ask questions of yourself— and then face the music— is key.
Inclusivity. In business school in the mid-2000s, I learned about targeting, personas, and all that stuff that makes your marketing really tight, but also your market really small. Then I went on to Wrigley/Mars and was trained to throw a lot of the conventional wisdom about targets out the window. Now, naturally, I gravitate somewhere towards the middle, but firmly believe in making your customer base as big as possible through inclusive (not broad) product development, placement, pricing, and messaging strategy. Broad positioning is generally very generic and watered-down. In comparison, inclusive positioning is nuanced and precise. It often captures the essence of a fairly universal human truth and invites people in based on their perceived likeness to the need or solution represented. In a May/June 2024 article, Harvard Business Review reminds us that Gretta Gerwig’s version of Barbie is inclusive (I caught my husband watching it on a flight, and smiling, earlier this year). I’d also add Bombas to this list, solving the “who has time to sock shop?” problem for men, women, moms, athletes, dresser-uppers, and us casual types. And modern-day Sephora is more inclusive than ever bringing beauty to her, him, and them— ages tween to grandma.
Action in Empathy. “Empathy” has been a buzzword in marketing for decades and is often touted as an attribute of good leadership, but can it be taught? I’m not sure. I sometimes think of empathy like a language where if you don’t learn it when you’re young (through mentorship, examples, and experiences) it can be very hard to fully adopt. I see many well-intentioned people try to operate with more empathy into adulthood and get stuck, either hung-up on a singular perspective (that may or may not be their own) or overwhelmed by the sheer volume of perspectives that exist in the world today. Thus, related to empathy (whether you genuinely have it or are “working on it”), is the need to action through it— make decisions, advance ideas, and launch stuff. Actioning through empathy is challenging, but I do believe it can be taught— and, no, it’s not about brute force or founder mode.
Thank you for reading. Due to the US election next Tuesday, we’ll be taking a week off from posting. See you next on November 12th.
In “Founder Mode,” Graham does not explicitly state that he believes founder mode should be taught in business school, but implies it in comparison to manager mode which he suggests is the dominant teaching of those brought in to usurp or overpower founder-CEOs. He also explicitly states, “I hope in a few years founder mode will be as well understood as manager mode.” suggesting a desire for its methods and norms to spread through the same systems (i.e. business education) as manager mode.
In “Founder Mode,” Graham writes, “There are as far as I know no books specifically about founder mode. Business schools don't know it exists. All we have so far are the experiments of individual founders who've been figuring it out for themselves.”
Geoff Colvin in the linked Sept 9, 2024 article for Fortune further emphasizes, “If we used this data [superiority of a subset of founder-CEO companies] to declare that founder mode beats manager mode, the world’s statisticians would have us arrested for the crime of survivor bias. Those 22 founder-CEO companies are a tiny fraction of the many thousands of startups launched over the same time periods, and we don’t have data on how each was managed. For starters, what percentage of startups crashed and burned under outsider managers versus what percentage crashed and burned under the founders?”
Joe Procopio, “Why Your Founder Mode CEO Is Terrible,” Inc., pub date 9/6/2024, https://www.inc.com/joe-procopio/why-your-founder-mode-ceo-is-terrible.html.
In “Founder Mode,” Graham describes “manager mode” as “hire professional fakers and let them drive the company into the ground.”